Throughout 2020, local media ignored the story, hoping it would go away. It didn't.
While other media outlets covered the story in 2021, the Pukekohe media was eerily silent, and the segregation story remained a taboo subject.
I pushed to speak at Pukekohe Library and address residents face to face but was told they were concerned for my safety and fearful the talk would descend into a shouting match. I went on Māori TV and made my case.
Shortly after, they relented when a group of Māori librarians held an intervention and agreed to oversee the event.
Over 100 people turned out. The mood was supportive and amidst singing and tears, several attendees stood and attested to the reality of what happened.
After most people had left, several elderly Pākehā confronted me.
Before they could open their mouths, they gave me "the look".
I had seen it before and knew what was coming.
A woman, clearly annoyed, blurted out: "I don't know where you heard the story, but it's wrong.
"I went to the main Pukekohe school in the late 40s and they never had segregated toilets."
Another chimed in: "We all got along good with Māori. There was never discrimination!"
Three weeks later on June 24th, I addressed the community at the Pukekohe Town Hall.
It was a milestone event for the town and drew 350 people, including Race Relations Commissioner Meng Foon, Ngāti Tamaoho elders, Auckland councillors, and activists such as Pania Newton.
Three days later, there was a hikoi down the main street led by Auckland Council cultural advisor Richard Nahi, who grew up in Pukekohe and experienced the segregation firsthand.
Local media ignored both talks and the march.
Earlier this year the tide began to turn. More and more schools invited me to speak, most notably Pukekohe High School.
The local council gave a teacher at the school, Catherine Tamihere, $10,000 to create a mural in the town centre celebrating Māori culture.
Her students helped paint it.
The great-great-grand daughter of Whina Cooper, Catherine and I have since written a children's book on the segregation. Her students helped illustrate it.
We have a second book in the works and there are more murals planned.
What transpired at Pukekohe should be taught in our schools alongside Gallipoli, Passchendaele, the Dawn Raids, the land march, and Ihumātao. From 1925 to the early 1960s, most barbers would not cut Māori hair, shopkeepers refused them entry, and they were forced to sit in segregated seats at the cinema away from European patrons.
Bus drivers made them stand for white passengers, taxis refused to pick them up, and there were segregated swimming baths.
For much of this period, businesses in town denied Māori the use of public toilets.
But the real story is the deaths of hundreds of infants and children who perished from preventable diseases directly linked to their atrocious housing on the market gardens, where they struggled to survive in slums that often consisted of hovels and manure sheds, that had no electricity, toilets or running water.
The legacy of the racial segregation continues today in the form of intergenerational trauma.
This is the subject of a new documentary, No Māori Allowed, that puts a human face to the suffering.
It is remarkable that in the third decade of the 21st century, many non-Māori have never heard of the events at Pukekohe - or worse yet, refuse to believe it.
Māori already know the story. They live it every day.
Many Pākehā remain oblivious to their plight because they have not experienced the discrimination themselves.
It is my hope that this documentary will mark a watershed moment for Kiwis by opening eyes to the deep cultural divide that continues to hang over this country like a long black cloud.
Yes, New Zealand, we have a race relations problem and it's not only Māori.
The solution is education - and this documentary is a good starting point.
To quote Shakespeare: "It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves."
Robert Bartholomew is an American medical sociologist, journalist and author. He is an Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychological Medicine at the University of Auckland.
